Some misc things guys : RJ/Devon/ Silvio



  • @BShark Yeah, unlike most people I was pretty pumped about the signing of Braun and McBride. They coupled with Garrett and Dave will allow us to build depth.



  • Marco said:

    @BShark Yeah, unlike most people I was pretty pumped about the signing of Braun and McBride. They coupled with Garrett and Dave will allow us to build depth.

    If both stick around, there is every reason to believe they will be major contributors by their JR year.



  • Marco said:

    @BShark Yeah, unlike most people I was pretty pumped about the signing of Braun and McBride. They coupled with Garrett and Dave will allow us to build depth.

    I love McBride’s game. Braun has improved his game over the past year so I’m confident he’ll develop here.

    Above everything I respect that they signed into the teeth of the FBI issues. We haven’t seen a single bit of hesitation from them.



  • BeddieKU23 said:

    Marco said:

    @BShark Yeah, unlike most people I was pretty pumped about the signing of Braun and McBride. They coupled with Garrett and Dave will allow us to build depth.

    I love McBride’s game. Braun has improved his game over the past year so I’m confident he’ll develop here.

    Above everything I respect that they signed into the teeth of the FBI issues. We haven’t seen a single bit of hesitation from them.

    Amen.



  • I wish we developed players better leads to I wish we had a star to put us over the top. It’s cyclical and it’s EXTREMELY rare to put those two things together. When done it equals final fours and championships.



  • I’m not a Duke fan… at all… but I was disappointed in them this year. I didn’t see how they could lose in March, and I loved watching Zion play. I don’t know what the answer was for Duke. Is it just to have another couple experienced players? Then they take minutes away from the star freshmen. Does a team with freshmen starters ever really gel? There is no way they can match the connection of players who have played together for years.

    I’ve always supported the idea of a quality 3 and 4-star group with a 5-star or two sprinkled in. But the more I think about that the more I think in order to really gain from that, the 5-star player better be extraordinary. And I’m not talking about athleticism and individual skill set. I’m talking about being able to connect with a new team and gel quickly. Since it is such a leap from high school to college… I think it is rare to find a 5-star player that can offer as much as a less-talented player that has been on the squad for several years.

    Does that mean I don’t want us to sign 5-star guys? Ha… I’m addicted to the hype crack like everyone else. Even if my gut says something completely different.



  • @BShark makes a great point about the difference between KU and Michigan State. We don’t have a consistent pipeline to draw 50-150 talent from. Lots of kids in that range are either looking to stay closer to home, or looking for PT. KU may not offer either of those things. We have never consistently been able to land those types of players, and if you strike out on those guys you are moving way down the talent pipeline with your recruits.

    The Kansas City area doesn’t produce enough players in that range. In order to work, the KC metro would need to produce 2-3 top 150 players every year. That’s just not happening right now. Maybe we could pull off some sort of Texas thing, but even then, we risk losing those kids to TCU or Baylor because its closer to home and more likely that they get to play right away.



  • @justanotherfan Thanks. Just looking at their rosters you see so much of their player base is from that area, or Nike funnels like Sunrise in Wichita.

    Looking at their upcoming roster which many believe to be one of the best next year.

    Cassius Winston - Detroit MI

    Mark Watts - Detroit MI

    Kyle Ahrens - Ohio

    Marcus Bingham - GR MI

    Xavier Tillman - GR MI

    Foster Loyer - Clarkston MI (I have family including MSU grads and current students from here and this one was over from birth, he would have walked on I firmly believe)

    Gabe Brown - MI

    Connor George - MI

    Aaron Henry - Indiana

    Thomas Kithier - MI

    Josh Langford - A big outlier, one would assume Nike helped.

    Malik Hall - Nike funnel but also was in Illinois before going to Sunrise so fairly local as well.

    GR = Grand Rapids which is literally an hour drive from MSU’s campus.

    Izzo barely leaves the state and this roster is fantastic. KU could never come close to this even if they somehow hit every hidden gem type from KS and the KC metro (which is impossible btw).



  • @BShark

    Looking at that MSU roster, for KU to do the same, they could go as far as maybe St. Louis to the east, the entire state of Kansas, Des Moines and Omaha to the north/northeast, Tulsa, OKC, Little Rock to the south/southeast.

    Their roster next year would be Braun, McBride, Ochai, Lightfoot (since his parents were alums) and then we really start searching for scholarship players. And I can’t think of many guys that are currently D1 guys that KU outright missed on locally.



  • “BuT wE ArE kAnSas.”

    Being near a major basketball player producing state is a giant advantage. Easier to find “hidden gems” among other things. Proof is in the pudding. Self turned Illinois into a Championship caliber team by his 2nd season just from landing kids from Illinois.

    We are not located in one of those states. Our local AAU team is a Nike “funneler” as is our local prep school. Recruiting at KU is harder than it “should” be.



  • @justanotherfan People love pointing to outliers like Baker, Shamet, Harding etc but as mentioned even if you somehow hit on all those guys (and remember we wanted Mitch Ballock but he wanted to play early) it wouldn’t be enough to field the kind of teams KU fans are accustom to or even typical MSU squads. KU simply has to recruit nationally which limits the pool in ways @Kcmatt7 has mentioned previously.

    And yeah excellent point about MOKAN. MOKAN and Sunrise being Nike is super not great. There was a MOKAN coach that HATED KU. Given KU has landed some MOKAN kids recently, maybe he is gone? I don’t follow super closely.



  • @justanotherfan I think we should forget about the Midwest and concentrate on the coasts. It CAN be done:

    Alonzo Jamison - California

    Adonis Jordan - California

    Rex Walters - California

    Scott Pollard - California

    Jacque Vaughn - California

    Jerod Haase - California

    Eric Chenowith - California

    Sasha Kahn - Florida

    Russell Robinson - New York

    Aaron Miles - Oregon

    Morris Twins - Philadelphia

    Then throw in a couple of them from Chicago - Sherron Collins, Mario Little and a Billy Thomas from Louisiana.

    There’s talent to be found all over the country / world.

    This list is in no way all inclusive - there are MANY that I forgot or didn’t have time to research.



  • We’d have to add a Cali guy to the Assistant coaching staff.



  • @BShark I’m ok with that!



  • nuleafjhawk said:

    @BShark I’m ok with that!

    Honestly Aaron Miles is on my short, short list of future assistants to go after if one moves on. Head Coach of the Warriors G League affiliate now.



  • @nuleafjhawk Paul Pierce - California. Not that I agree with you about giving up the Midwest.



  • BShark said:

    Izzo barely leaves the state and this roster is fantastic. KU could never come close to this even if they somehow hit every hidden gem type from KS and the KC metro (which is impossible btw).

    Your point about the ease of getting recruits has made me think… A. you’re absolutely right. B. Kansas needs to be a market disruptor to recruit 50-100 nationally. I would like to know if. KU could do a better job distributing it’s brand to the youth nationally. In my kids rec league here in VA we have several college team names in our league, some differ each year, some remain the same. We have had a Duke, the VA teams, a couple national teams, Texas twice for instance. Being a coach I mentioned KU. They said one person mentioned it once before but they never did it. How do we have Texas but not Kansas, and how huge is it to put Kansas on a kids youth jersey ? Is there a way we can distribute the brand better?



  • @Marco I did say to forget about the Midwest, huh? Should have said don’t restrict ourselves to the MW exclusively.



  • Going back to Cali? Roy did well there. I’m cool with that too as long as we don’t also go back to Roy’s every other year recruiting style.



  • @nuleafjhawk I’m not sure if you did or not. I was not trying to call you out or anything. But do agree - though we still need to recruit it - that the midwest has not been too kind lately.



  • FarmerJayhawk said:

    nuleafjhawk said:

    @BShark I’m ok with that!

    Honestly Aaron Miles is on my short, short list of future assistants to go after if one moves on. Head Coach of the Warriors G League affiliate now.

    very nice - would be a nice addition. Would have to agree



  • The biggest thing in our recruitment is that we have to recruit nationally because we do not have enough high D1 level talent to allow us to just recruit locally. We should be looking for the Perry Ellis’ and the like, but we have to be a national recruiting force because we just don’t have enough guys to fill a roster.

    But the challenge with this is that when you recruit lower ranked guys (40-150 rank), you have to factor in geography because that is one of the things that those recruits are considering.

    Fully half of the guys ranked 41-100 on ESPN are heading to a “local” school. We would be competing with a school like UMass for a kid from Rhode Island, or trying to convince a kid from Spokane not to go to Gonzaga. That’s a tough sell.



  • It appears Silvio is not going to show up for the G League combine. THE PLOT THICKENS.



  • BShark said:

    It appears Silvio is not going to show up for the G League combine. THE PLOT THICKENS.

    Hmmm , time to stir the pot. - -Anyone thinking this might bode well for us - - may be something about ready to break? - -ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY



  • I definitely see this as a positive.



  • @BShark I said that already🥴



  • Crimsonorblue22 said:

    @BShark I said that already🥴

    When? What thread?



  • @BShark forgot



  • Rj one I think



  • Kcmatt7 said:

    Rj one I think

    Oh, so never finding it now then HA.



  • @BShark so why would Silvio turn down a G league invite, no matter what? How do we know for sure he got an invite? Article in kc star. Also, looks like him and his guardian/whatever you call him are still on good terms.



  • He was absolutely invited. He was on previous lists of expected attendants. And well, yeah of course he is.



  • @BShark why wouldn’t he go? Hurt?



  • Crimsonorblue22 said:

    @BShark why wouldn’t he go? Hurt?

    No one is saying.



  • @nuleafjhawk Embiid and DeSousa from the West Coast…of Africa.



  • KU now the co-favorite with Memphis for RJ Hampton. Both 43% chance. All 5 “experts” today predicted him to go to Kansas.



  • @BShark your opinion?



  • Just a guess. Silvio doesn’t need the G League combine because overseas is the plan. For all we know he got a good offer.



  • @FarmerJayhawk makes sense, guess they heard bad news



  • FarmerJayhawk said:

    Just a guess. Silvio doesn’t need the G League combine because overseas is the plan. For all we know he got a good offer.

    While this makes a little sense and still doesn’t hurt him to go to the combine. One would assume his end goal is the NBA and he needs all the reps he can get in front of NBA personnel since they haven’t really seen him play. Live reps would do him some good.

    Other possibilities are he injured something or that they are expecting good news on the appeal.

    All in all it seems like a odd decision and from the quote I saw yesterday Self acted like it was a surprise to him as well.



  • Thought process is the risk:reward just isn’t there. It’s just G League interest and he can do much better overseas. If he plays well there NBA teams will notice.



  • @FarmerJayhawk I’m not understanding the risk reward reference – what’s the harm of being at a G-League combine? It does seem like a very odd decision as @Woodrow referenced, barring something definitive (appeal granted, Euro contract) or an injury (which it seems would have been mentioned).



  • If Silvio’s agent likes his current offers abroad, there is absolutely no reason to go risk those by going to the combine. He isn’t going to get drafted and the G-League would absolutely still offer him a roster spot.

    Imagine he gets absolutely dominated at the combine scrimmage. Or he just absolutely cannot shoot that day. Just as quickly as contracts can get offered they can get rescinded.



  • I think we need to patch up some recruiting spots where we used to act a bit aloof. I would start at Sunshine Christian Academy, in Wichita. We could also improve our image in the Greater KC area. And then there is the AAU circuit…

    We used to count on mostly just a few prep schools… that isn’t feeding us enough players.



  • drgnslayr said:

    I think we need to patch up some recruiting spots where we used to act a bit aloof. I would start at Sunshine Christian Academy, in Wichita. We could also improve our image in the Greater KC area. And then there is the AAU circuit…

    We used to count on mostly just a few prep schools… that isn’t feeding us enough players.

    Sunrise and Mokan are NIKE.



  • Kcmatt7 said:

    If Silvio’s agent likes his current offers abroad, there is absolutely no reason to go risk those by going to the combine. He isn’t going to get drafted and the G-League would absolutely still offer him a roster spot.

    Imagine he gets absolutely dominated at the combine scrimmage. Or he just absolutely cannot shoot that day. Just as quickly as contracts can get offered they can get rescinded.

    That makes sense … I assume thus he doesn’t accept the offers because he’s waiting on the NCAA. That would perhaps indicate no decision has been made there that we don’t know about.



  • @HighEliteMajor Exactly what @Kcmatt7 said



  • BShark said:

    drgnslayr said:

    I think we need to patch up some recruiting spots where we used to act a bit aloof. I would start at Sunshine Christian Academy, in Wichita. We could also improve our image in the Greater KC area. And then there is the AAU circuit…

    We used to count on mostly just a few prep schools… that isn’t feeding us enough players.

    Sunrise and Mokan are NIKE.

    If I were Bill and KU, I would pressure the Hell out of Adidas to go and get Sunrise in the near future. That would be a huge, huge, huge get for us.



  • drgnslayr said:

    I think we need to patch up some recruiting spots where we used to act a bit aloof. I would start at Sunshine Christian Academy, in Wichita. We could also improve our image in the Greater KC area. And then there is the AAU circuit…

    We used to count on mostly just a few prep schools… that isn’t feeding us enough players.

    Yea tough go at the moment. Nike has it’s pull. We got two MoKan guys in two years. That’s pretty good all things considered.



  • Kcmatt7 said:

    BShark said:

    drgnslayr said:

    I think we need to patch up some recruiting spots where we used to act a bit aloof. I would start at Sunshine Christian Academy, in Wichita. We could also improve our image in the Greater KC area. And then there is the AAU circuit…

    We used to count on mostly just a few prep schools… that isn’t feeding us enough players.

    Sunrise and Mokan are NIKE.

    If I were Bill and KU, I would pressure the Hell out of Adidas to go and get Sunrise in the near future. That would be a huge, huge, huge get for us.

    Not opposed at all to getting a local funnel. Could move kids there and they would get a feel for what Kansas is like.


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